


Ugly Dreams

by Jen425



Series: Power Rangers Online [1]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Zeo
Genre: (Obviously), Alternate Universe - Sword Art Online Fusion, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Inspired by Sword Art Online, M/M, Not all characters appear, unknown danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: The revolutionary technology of the Nervegear. The VRMMO turned living nightmare.It begins.





	Ugly Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> This is so goddamn self indulgent, folks, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll continue this. That said, I do have plans for the rest of the game, to cover all 75 levels actually cleared and all major characters through Dino Thunder, with some SPD, Mystic Force, and Samurai gen 17, plus RPM and Dino Charge, due to their AU status.
> 
> For reference:  
Tommy - Drakkon  
Aisha - GoldTurin  
Jason - Rex  
Rocky - RockApe  
Justin - BlueJ  
Trini - Crystall  
Billy - Beowulf  
Zack - TaylorZ  
Kim - Pterara  
Kat - Pinkat in the Beta, later Katastrophe in SSO  
Rita - Zordon

Power Rangers Online. The first game with revolutionary VR full-dive technology, and loosely inspired by an old Japanese show known as Super Sentai, designed by the same creator as the tech that powered it, Rita Bandora. In a world full of almost endless possible skill sets, giant robots, and colorful rules, you could immerse yourselves in a truly unique universe that still felt vaguely familiar.

…well, most of the time. There were the Ninja levels, the space ones, and the magical ones, after all.

World-wide, only 12,000 copies were sold, for the official release.

And, around the world, people got ready to enter a new world.

  
  
  


“I’m still so upset I can’t log on,” Kat complained. Tommy laughs.

“It’s only the first day,” he says. “We were planning to stay in the Command Center and look for a temp Blue, anyways.”

Kat just sighs.

“I know,” she says. “But there’s something magical about signing on together, all crowded together in the center chamber.”

Tommy smiles, remembering the test, in the Beta.

“Yeah,” he says. “There really is.”

It’s Kat’s turn to laugh, now, and she does so with no more regret in her words.

“But look at me, being a hypocrite,” she says. “I’m keeping  _ you _ from the game.”

Tommy shakes his head, even knowing that his friend can’t see it.

“I don’t mind, I’m going solo for the first few days to get Sixth status,” he says. “I’ll call you tonight, so be sure to tell me how the competition goes.”

“I will,” Kat replies. “Bye, Tommy.”

Tommy smiles.

“See you soon.”

After hanging up with Kat, it takes little time to set up his new-old game, which Tommy is grateful for because he really is vibrating with boundless excitement.

“Link Start!” He calls.

Drakkon lands in his starting civilian green shirt and black pants, hand-held morpher clutched in his right hand. He’s two inches taller, several years older, and with somewhat longer and much darker hair worn loose.

And he smiles.

  
  
  


“RockApe?” GoldTurin asks, angrily. “Adam and I spent minutes researching our names and you go with  _ RockApe? _ ”

RockApe at least has the common sense to look apologetic. He’s dressed in a Red plaid shirt, and blue jeans, having opted for a two wrist morpher that shone on each arm, slouched into his pockets. His hair is lighter brown than reality and short to the point of a buzz cut.

“It was such an easy pun?” He offers. “Besides, what’s with the Gold? You said you wanted Yellow, for the options.”

GoldTurin crosses her arms over the golden crop top that came with her starting civilian outfit of a golden shirt and necklace with black shorts and shiny golden boots. She clenches her hand-held morpher, tightly, long blond hair over dark skin a fun dichotomy, as is her new height. 

“Gold is more powerful,” she says. “I can still add Yellow later, once I get to Level 43.”

RockApe shrugs.

“That’s fair,” he says. “Anyways, we should go find some better clothes and starter weapons, to pass the time. Adam will be on, in an hour or two.”

  
  
  


By some stroke of luck, Rex finds himself appearing right next to TaylorZ and Crystall.

“Hey guys,” he says, and both of them whip around at the familiar voice, one which quickly matches with his mostly-identical appearance, short brown hair and tan skin. His starting civilian outfit is, of course, Red, with loose red pants and a sleeveless red-and-white plaid shirt. He’s not quite as buff, either, but that comes somewhat with the game mechanics

“Rex!” Crystall says, smiling. Her hair is short and dyed yellow at the tips, and she wears a yellow crop top and black leggings. Her hand-held morpher is already clipped to her belt.

“Bro!” TaylorZ calls. “This is convenient.”

TaylorZ had optioned for a more muscular build than his real-world lithe body made for dance, and he was probably as tall as Drakkon’s avatar will be, when they meet up next week. He wears a black shirt with purple sleeves and dark blue jeans, his morpher still in his hand.

Rex nods.

“We’ve got our whole team, for now,” he says. “Drakkon wants to get Sixth status quickly, Beowulf has plans with his IRL friend, today, and Katastrophe has her IRL competition.”

“So I take it that this lovely lady must be the wonderful Crystall?” TaylorZ asks, with a flourishing bow. Crystall rolls her eyes but smiles, nonetheless.

“And you must be Rex’s boyfriend,” she says, calmly. Rex blushes, but TaylorZ merely smirks.

“The one and only,” he says.

“Zack isn’t much of a gamer,” Jason says, but neither was he, until Drakkon had asked him to join in the Beta.

TaylorZ nods.

“I am just here for my  _ lovely  _ boyfriend,” he says.

Crystall giggles.

  
  
  


After they change into better clothes, RockApe and GoldTurin decide to split up until when they planned on meeting up with Adam.

“He’d better be using the username we planned or I  _ will _ kill him,” GoldTurin mutters as she stalks away in light jeans and a yellow hoodie lined with gold. A Dagger is sheathed at her side, for the first five cities before Morphing is unlocked.

RockApe just laughs and wanders in the other direction… only to be all but knocked over by a long haired Green.

He looks like he knows where he’s going. A Beta Tester?

RockApe follows after him.

  
  
  


BlueJ looks up in awe, at the Command Center.

“Wow!” He says. “This is amazing!”

“It is incredible,” an unfamiliar voice says from behind him. BlueJ jumps and finds a muscular guy with messy blonde hair that goes to his chin and a blue top, the same one as his own. “My identification is Beowulf, by the way.”

BlueJ smiles. Although he’s fairly tall in his adult avatar, he’s still an inch or two shorter than Beowulf.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m BlueJ.”

“Billy!”

A woman runs over, practically knocking Beowulf to the ground. She’s fairly short, with a strong, lithe build. Her brown hair is tied into a side ponytail and her starting outfit is a pink crop top and white leggings.

“Thank god,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for ages!”

Beowulf just blinks.

“I apologize for entering the game thirty minutes late,” he says. “Hello…”

“Pterara,” the woman says. “And it’s not like I play video games all the time, or anything. I don’t even know where the Pink shop is!”

“You can pull it up on your map,” BlueJ offers. Pterara blinks, turning around slowly.

“The what now?”

BlueJ opens her own and shows her.

Beowulf looks at him carefully.

“I don’t recognize you from the Beta,” he says. BlueJ shrugs.

“I didn’t get very far,” he says. “Wait… you’re  _ that _ Beowulf?”

As in, the best Tech in the Beta?

Billy rubs the back of his neck, chuckling awkwardly.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the one.”

  
  
  


“Now  _ this _ is more like it,” Crystall says, spinning in her loose, long-sleeve yellow top. “I really hate the female starter outfit.”

“It looked fine when you had that black shirt under it,” Rex offers. “Easier to grab your dagger, too.”

Crystall just rolls her eyes.

“I was this close to punching every stupid guy in the safe zone,” she says. “It’s 2021 - we should have practical female costumes by now!”

“The Ranger costumes always looked practical,” TaylorZ offers. Which is a fair point. In the Beta, Crystall had also been Yellow, and she’d gotten to choose the skirtless mode, for all her uniforms.

Still…

“The starter civvies remain stupid,” Crystall says, surely. “Even if Stinger…”

She trails off. Stinger, Sabrina, has been the Black on their Beta team, the Go Go Power Rangers. And her ex-girlfriend. She’d also taken to the realistically impractical but in-game standard outfits, forming a “civilian outfit” with a ridiculous amount of impractical golden armor (there had never been any question about what secondary Color she would have chosen) and very tight black clothing, but she’d worn the standard black crop top up till level 3.

Then she’d… changed, and Crystall had to break up with her.

It hurt, still.

Rex puts a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay?” He asks. Crystall shakes her head, blinking back tears.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Let’s just get to the Park, already.”

  
  
  


“So you’re famous and you didn’t tell me?” Pterara teases, after they finish buying better clothes and starter weapons and say goodbye to BlueJ, who had happily rambled about how amazing the Go Go Power Rangers were, in the Beta, to a very amused Pterara.

(He may look matured, but it didn’t take much investigation to ascertain his true youth.)

Pterara’s teasing was somewhat mitigated by the way she awkwardly shifted the large compound bow and quiver on her back.

(Really, he had  _ tried _ to tell her, but a bow is not a good weapon until they reach morphing! The collapsible lance he’d gotten is much more practical.)

Beowulf shrugs.

“I am adept with technology in the virtual world,” he says. “My teammates were the ones adept at combat.”

“Not from what BlueJ said,” Pterara teases. “And why haven’t you introduced me?”

Beowulf smiles.

“This outing is for you,” he says. “To relieve your frustrations on nonsentient artificial intelligences.”

Pterara smiles.

“Then are you going to show me around?” She asks.

  
  
  


“No, not like that,” Rex says, laughing. “Civilian weapons don’t have sword skills.”

TaylorZ all but pouts, glaring at the putties.

“Sorry if I can’t balance being a straight A student, martial arts, and being a master gamer,” he snarks.

Crystall snorts, stabbing and kicking back a lone Putty that TaylorZ hadn’t even noticed coming behind them.

“I’d hardly call him a master gamer,” she says. “He’s good, though.”

“Why thank you,” Rex replies, with an unbelievable amount of snark. Certainly more than Zack’s ever heard Jason use, irl.

“So what  _ do _ I do, then?” He asks.

“Well, these are regular putties,” Crystall says. “More or less this game’s slimes.”

“So, basically, the best thing to do is kick them,” Rex continues, doing just that. “It’s pretty simple.”

  
  
  


Caecilian wanders aimlessly around the Command Center, a black baseball bat strapped to his back over a loose black shirt. He has at least an hour before Rocky comes back from exploring and maybe half that before Aisha expects him to search her out.

Rocky’s a pretty big gamer, and Aisha is amazed at the possibilities of the full-dive VR technology, so they’d both excitedly gone over the manual for weeks, trying to decide what Color to make their characters. And Adam had followed along with his friends.

That said… he has no idea what he wants to do.

He knows what he  _ should _ do, that he should teleport to the Park and finds some putties to fight, or he should go ahead and find Aisha early.

But he doesn’t really want to.

And so he wanders.

  
  
  


Pterara bashes her head over another Putty’s head, smirking. God, this really is satisfying, but…

“We’ve been at this at least an hour,” she says. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Beowulf nods.

“Our base Morphers provide fifty free teleports,” he says. “Would you like to return to the safe zone?”

Pterara shake her head.

“No,” she says. “I think I actually want to log out. Dad’s be home, soon.”

Beowulf blinks.

“Ah.”

Pterara opens her menu, to do just that, and she finds… um…

“Hey,” she says. “Where’s the logout button?”

  
  
  


Kat has to admit it; she looks at her phone more often than she should, throughout the day. It’s been  _ hours _ , and, yes, PRO is  _ amazing _ , but Tommy or Jason or at the very least  _ Trini _ should have logged out for a break, by now.

Which means that she sees it, as the phone dings it.

** _Power RangersOnline - A Crisis_ **

They’re trapped in the game. Her friends are trapped in the game.

And there’s no way out. Except to clear the game. It’s  _ not _ endless new levels. It’s exactly 100. Made by Rita Repulsa.

Rita Repulsa…

Here’s the thing. Although 950 of the Beta Testers were chosen at random, fifty were chosen by Rita herself. Kat had been among them, and Tommy. Grace. Billy. Sabrina. Ari.

More, that she isn’t close to.

Hand-picked by Rita Repulsa…

To help her build a death world.

  
  
  


Rita smiles, as each and every player was teleported to the Command Center’s central chamber. What was it she said in the worldbuilding of Apocalex?

Your world is now my world, any your time is now over.

Now, let the tutorial end, and the game begin.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you want more! (I’ll probably write it, anyways)
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita, or my Power Rangers rewrite @long-live-the-power---rangers


End file.
